by the same author
*
Four Quartets
Old PossunFs Book Practical Cats
Selected Poems
The Waste Land and Other Poem^
Murder in the CatbeSral
The Film "‘Murder in the CathedraT
The Familj Reunion
The Cocktail Party
The Cor^dcntial Clerk
The Use oj PoetJj and the Use Criticism
Poetry and Drama
Notes Towards the Dc^nition oJ Culture
The Idea oJ a Christian Sociey
What IS a Classic'^
Selected Essays
Points of View
Collected Poems
1909-1935
by
T. S. Eliot
London
Faber Faber Limited
24 Russell Square
Collected Poems
1909-1935
First Published in April Mcmxxxvi
By Faber and Faber Limited
24 Russell Square London W,C. 1
Second Impression September Mcmxxxvii
Third Impression September Alcmxxxix
Fourth Impression Alay Alcmxli
Fijth Impression Novembci Afcmxlii
Sixth Impression, March Alcmxhv
Seventh Impression December Aicmxliv
Eighth Impression Julj^ Alcmxlv
hi 1 nth Impression January Alcmxlv 1
Tenth Impression November Afcmxlvi
Eleventh Impression October Afcmxlvi 1
TweIJih Impression October Aicmxiviii
Thirteenth Impression February Aicmxlix
Fourteenth Impression August Aicmh
Fifteenth Impression September Alcmhr
Printed in Great Britain by
R, AfacLehose and Company Limited
The Universiy Press, Glasgow
All rights reserved
Contents
Prufrock — 1917 page 9
The Love Song oj J, Alfred Prufrock 1 1
Portrait of a Ladj 1 6
Preludes 2 1
Rhapsody Sn a Windy Night 24
Morning at the Wir^low 2j
The ^Boston Evening Transcript' 28
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apolhnax 31
Hysteria 32
Conversation Galante 33
La Figlia che Piange 34
Poems — 1920 35
Gerontion 37
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a
Cigar 4^
meency Erect 4^
A Cooking Egg 44
Le Directeur 46
Milange AdulUre de Tout 4J
Lune de Miel 4^
The Hippopotamus 49
Dans le Restaurant gi
Whispers cf Immortally 53
Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service 55
Sweeny among the Nightingales 57
[5]
The Waste Land — 1922 p<jge S 9
/. The Burial oj the Dead 6 l
//. A Game oJ Chess 64
III. The Fire Sermon 68
IV. Death bj Water j3
V. What the Thunder said J 4
Notes on The Waste Land j8
The Hollow Men — 1925- 8s
Ash- Wednesday — 1930 91
I . Because 1 do not hope to turn again 93
II. Ladj, three white leopards sat under a
jumper-tree 95
III. At thejirst turning oJ the second stair 97
IV. Who walked between the violet and the
violet 9^
V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is
spent 1 00
VI. Although / do not hope to turn again 102
Ariel Poems 105
Journey of the Magi lO'j
A Song for Simeon 109
Animula 111
Marina 11 3
[ 6 ]
Unfinished Poems page I J 5
Sweeny A jam nes 1 j 7
Fra merit of a Vrohgac up
Fr( gment of an Agon 126
Coriolar
L Triumphal Mcrch isg
U. Dijficulties of a Stateman 13y
Minor Poems 141
Eyes that last I saw in tears 1 43
The wind sprang up at four clock 1 44
Fi vefn ger exerci ses 145
I. Lines to a Persian Cat 14S
II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier 14S
III. Lines to a Duck in a Park 146
IV. Lines to Ralph Flodgson Esqre. 146
V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza
Murad Ah Beg 141
Landscapes 148
I. New Hampshire 148
II. Virginia 14P
III. Usk 1 50
IV. Rannoch, bj Glencoe igi
V. Cape Ann 1 52
Lines for an old man 1 S 3
Choruses from 'The Rock’ 1 55
I. The Eagle soars in the summit of
Heaven
[7]
Choruses from ‘The Rock’ (cont.)
IL Thus jour fathers were made ^
III. The Word of the Lord came unto me,
sajing l6s
JV, There are those who would build the
Temple l68
V, 0 Lord, deliver me from th: man of
excellent intention and impure heart 169
VI. It IS hard for those who have never
known persecution 1 JO
VII. In the beginning God created the
world ly2
VIII. 0 Father we welcome jour i^ords 1 75
IX, Son of Man, behold with thine ejes,
and hear with thine ears Ijj
X. You ha\e seen the house built, jou
ha\ c seen it adorned lj9
IS 3
Burnt Norton
Pri^rock
and Other Observations
mi
For jean Verdenal, 1889-191^
mort aux Dardanelles
la quantitate
Puote veder del amor chc a te mi scalda,
Quando dismento nostra vanitate
Trattando V ombre come cosa salda.
The Love Song of]. Alfred hujock
S’ 10 credesse che mia nspostajosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa Jiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammat di questofondo
Non tOTW vivo alcun, s’ i odo il vero,
Senzo ffm/1 A' injamia ti nspondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening \s spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table ;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells :
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question.
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?*
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the comers of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimne)s,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes ;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that jou meet ;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of Ijands
That lift and drop a question on your plate ,
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there wnll be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do 1 dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair.
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
^They will say : ‘How his hair is growing thin ! ’ ]
My morning coat, ray collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-
prhey will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin ! ’]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons ; ^
fn]
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all-—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned ani wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt>ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume ?
And I have known the arms already, known them all —
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?.
I should have been a pair of ragged claw s
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers.
Asleep . . . tired ... or it malingers.
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
[> 3 ]
I Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Jhough I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
f I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter ;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker.
Anil have seen the eternal Footman h%ld my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming questior
To say: T am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ —
If one, settling a pillow by her head.
Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.
That is notit, at all,’
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled
streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that
trail along the floor —
And this, and so much more? —
It is impossible to say just what I mean I
[■ 4 ]
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
‘That is not it at all,
That is not what I r^eant, at all/
No ! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be ;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince ; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use.
Politic, cautious, and meticulous.
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse ;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old . . 1 grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind ? Do I dare to eat a peach ?
1 shall wear* white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
1 have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
[*i]
Portrait oj a Lady
Thou hast committed —
Fornication . but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead
The Jew of Malta
I
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself— as it will seem to do —
With T have saved this afternoon for you’ ;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole •
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
‘So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned m the concert room.’
— And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote comets
And begins.
‘You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? you are not blmd!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
[ i6]
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you —
Without these friendships — life, what cauchemarV
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite ‘false note. ’
— Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.
II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
‘Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands ^ ;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
‘You let It flow from you, you let it flow.
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.’
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
‘Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all. *
The voice returns hke the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon :
‘I am always sure that you understand*
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.
You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles* heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.
But what have I, but what have I, my friend.
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends. . . .
I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me ?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
1 remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?
Ill
The October night comes down ; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
‘And so you are going abroad ; and when do you return ?
But that’s a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.’
My smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac.
‘Perhaps you can write to me.’
My self-possession flares up for a second ;
This is as I had reckoned.
‘I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends. ’
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters ; we are really in the dark.
‘For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all w ere sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late
[19]
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends. *
And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression . . . dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco tr^^^^^ —
Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops ,
Doubtful, for a while
Not knowing w hat to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon
Would she not have the advantage, after all ?
This music is successful with a ^ dying fall’
Now that we talk of dying —
And should I have the right to smile?
Preludes
I
The winter evenin<5 st'lties down
With snicJJ of St calcs in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your fee t
And newspapers from vacant lots ;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots.
And at the comer of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
11
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the saw dust- tram pled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes.
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
[21 ]
Ill
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited ;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted ;
They flickered against the ceiling*.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters.
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands ;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair.
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block.
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock ;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes.
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened stree
Impatient to assume the world.
1 am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
[ 22 ]
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Rhapsody on a Windj Night
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memorv
( j
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions
Every street lamp that I pa
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, ^Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is tom and stained with sand.
And you see the comer of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin. ’
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things ;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
‘Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.’
So the hand of the child, automatic.
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the
quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen*eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool.
An old crab with barnacles on his back.
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered.
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed :
‘Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into comers.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
J
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brai
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices.
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cig[arettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
The lamp said ,
‘Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open ; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life*.’
The last twist of the knife.
Morning at the Window
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens ,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves ol fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
The Boston Evening Transcript
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe com.
When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript^
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to
Rochefoucauld,
If the street w ere time and he at the end of the street ,
And I say, ‘Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evemnq
Transcript,^
Aunt Helen
Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet—
He was aware that this sort of tiling had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees —
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived
[ 29 ]
Cousin Nang'
Miss Nancy Ellicott
Strode across the hills and broke them,
Rode across the hills and broke them —
The barren New England hills —
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture.
Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modem dances ;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about
But they knew that it was modem.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law.
Mr. ApoUmax
Q Tijs (caivdnp-os. 'Hpd/cAas, t^s irajxxSo^oAoywir.
€t;/iij;^avos avSpcoTros.
Lucian
When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure anv)ng the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-
Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea’s
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the
green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
‘He is a charming man’ — ‘But after all what did he mean ?’--
‘His pointed ears He must be unbalanced.’—
‘There was something he said that I might have challenged. ’
Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.
Hjsteria
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her
laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only acci-
dental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by
short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her tliroat, bruised by the ripple of
unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands
was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over
the rusty green iron table, saying: ‘If the lady and gentleman
wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentle-
man wish to take their tea in the garden . I decided that
if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the
fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I con-
centrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
(32I
Conversation Galante
I observe : ‘Our sentimental friend the moon !
Or possibly (fantastic, 1 confess)
It may be Prester John*s balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distrt
She then : ‘How you digre^^s I *
And I then: ‘Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we expla*..
The night and moonshine , music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity/
She then: ‘Does this refer to me?^
‘Oh no, It is 1 who am inane/
‘You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute — ’
And — ‘Are we then so serious?^
La Figlia Che Piange
0 quam te memorem virgo . . .
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —
Clasp your flowers to you with a j5ained surprise —
Fling them to the grouncj and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes :
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So 1 would have had him leave.
So I would have had her stand and grieve.
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body tom and bruised,*
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft.
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours :
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together I
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
[ 34 ]
Poems
1920
Gerontion
Thou hast norjouth nor age
But as It were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
Here I am, an old man m a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, ivaiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the wmdow sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead ;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. ‘We would see a sign ! ’
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers ; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room ;
f 37 1
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians ;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles ; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant
shuttles
Weave the wind. 1 have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness ? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed.
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year Us he devours. Think at
last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.
[38]
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion : why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use then# for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium.
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled.
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do.
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay ? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy
straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims.
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy comer.
Tenants of the house.
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
[ 39 ]
Burbank with a Baedeker:
Blcistein with a Cigar
Tra-la-la-la-h-Id-hlre — nil nisi Jirinum stabile
est; caetcra fumus — the gondola topped, the old
palace was there, how charming its grcv and pink —
goats and monkcjs, with such hair too! — so the
countess passed on until she came through the little
park, where Niohe presented her with a cabinet, and
so departed.
Burbank crossed a little bridge
Descending at a small hotel ;
Princess Volupine arrived,
They were together, and he fell.
Defunctive music under sea
Passed seaward with the passing bell
Slowly: the God Hercules
Had left him, that had loved him well.
The horses, under the axletree
Beat up the dawn from Istria
With even feet. Her shuttered barge
Burned on the water all the day.
But this or such was Bleistein’s way:
A saggy bending of the knees
And elbows, with the palms turned out,
Chicago Semite Viennese.
A lustreless protrusive eye
Stares from the protozoic slime
[40]
At a perspective of Canaletto.
The smoky candle end of time
Declines. On the Rialto once.
The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
Money in furs. The boatman smiles,
Princess Volupine extends
A meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand
To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,
She entertains Sir Ferdinand
Klein. Who clipped the lion's wings
And flea'd his rump and pared his claws?
Thought Burbank, meditating on
Time's ruins, and the seven laws.
[ 41 1
Sweeny Erect
And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leajless ; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges ; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!
Paint me a cavernous waste shdi’e
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.
Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne’s hair
And swell with haste the perjured sails.
Morning stirs the feet and hands
(Nausicaa and Polypheme).
Gesture of orang-outang
Rises from the sheets in steam.
This withered root of knots of hair
Slitted below and gashed with eyes.
This oval O cropped out with teeth :
The sickle motion from the thighs
Jackknifes upward at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the pillow slip.
Sweeney addressed full length to shave
Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
[ 42 ]
Knows the female temperament
And wipes the suds aroimd his face
(The lengthened shadow of a man
Is history, said Emerson
Who had no seen the silhouette
Of Sweeney straddled i.i the snn )
Tests the razor on his ieg
Waiting until the shriek subsides.
The epileptic on the bed
Curves backward, clutching at her sides.
The ladies of the corridor
Find themselves involved, disgraced,
Call witness to their principles
And deprecate the lack of taste
Observing that hysteria
Might easily be misunderstood ;
Mrs. Turner intimates
It does the house no sort of good.
But Doris, towelled from the bath.
Enters padding on broad feet.
Bringing sal volatile
And a glass of brandy neat.
[ 43 ]
A Cooking Egg
Ed Van trentiesme de mon aage
Que toutes mes hont£Sj'aj beues
Pipit sate upright in her chair
Some distance from where I was sitting
Views the Oxford Colleges
Lay on the table, with the knitting.
Daguerreotypes and silhouettes.
Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
An Invitation to the Dance.
1 shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.
1 shall not want Capital in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.
I shall not want Society in Heaven,
Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride ;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
Than Pipit’s experience could provide.
I shall not want Pipit in Heaven :
Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred T ranees ;
Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.
But where is the penny world I bought
To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
From Kentish Town and Colder *s Green ;
Where are the eagles and the trumpets?
Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s.
Le DirecteuT
Malheur k la malheureuse Tamise
Qui coule si pr^s du Spectateur.
Le directeur
Conservateur
Du Spectateur
Empeste la brise.
Les actioiinaires
Reactionnaires
Du Spectateur
Conservateur
Bras dessus bras dessoub
Font des tours
A pas de loup.
Dans un egout
line petite fille
En guenilles
Camarde
Regarde
Le directeur
Du Spectateur
Conservateur
Et creve d’amour.
Melange Adultere de Tout
En Amerique, professeur ;
En Angleterre, joumaliste;
C*est a grands pas et en sueur
Que VO us suivrez a peine ma piste.
En Yorkshire, conferencier ;
A Londres, un peu banquier,
Vous me paierez bien la tete.
C’est a Paris que je me coiffe
Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.
En Allemagne, philosophe
Surexcite par Emporheben
Au grand air de Bergsteigleben ;
J’erre toujours de-ci de-la
A divers coups de tra la la
De Damas jusqu’a Omaha.
Je celebrai mon jour de fete
Dans une oasis d’Afrique
Vetu d’une peau de girafe.
On montrera mon cenotaphe
Aux cotes brulantes de Mozambique.
[47 ]
Lune de Miel
Hs ont YU les Pays-Bas, ils rentrcnt a Terre Haute ;
Mais une nuit d'ete, les voici a Ravenne,
A I’aise entre deux draps, chez deux centaines de punaise*
La sueur aestivale, et une forte odeur de chienne.
Ils restent sur le dos ecartant les genoux
De quatre jambes molles tout gonflees de morsures.
On releve le drap pour mieux egratigner.
Moins d’une lieue d’ici est Saint Apollinaire
En Classe, basilique connue des amateurs
De chapitaux d’acanthe que toumoie le vent.
Ils vont prendre le train de huit heures
Prolonger leurs misferes de Padoue a Milan
Oil se trouve la Gene, et un restaurant pas cher.
Lui pense aux pourboires, et redige son bilan.
Ils auront vu la Suisse et traverse la France.
Et Saint Apollinaire, raide et ascetique,
Vieille usine desaflFectee de Dieu, tient encore
Dans ses pierres kroulantes la forme prkise de Byzance.
I 48]
The Hippopotamus
And when this epistle is read among j^ou, cause that
it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans.
The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud ;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock ;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends.
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The ’potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango -tree ;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd.
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one witli God.
The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep ; at night he hunts ;
[49 ]
God works in a mysterious way —
The Church can sleep and feed at once.
I saw the ’potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas ,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud .hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms -enfold.
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow.
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
Dans le Restaurant
Lc gar^on d61abr6 qui n*a rien i faire
Que de se gratter les doigts et se pencher sur mon ^paulc:
‘Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux,
Du vent, du grand soleil, et de la pluie ;
C’est ce qu’on appelie le jour de lessive des gueux. ’
(Bavard, baveux, ^ la croupe arrondie,
je te prie, au moins, ne have pas dans la soupe),
‘Les saules tremp^s, et des bourgeons sur les ronces—
C’est 1^, dans une averse, qu’on s’abrite.
J ’avals sept ans, elle 6tait plus petite.
Elle etait toute mouillee, je lui ai donne des primeveres.’
Les taches de son gilet montent au chilfre de trente-huit.
‘ Je la chatouillais, pour la faire rire.
J’eprouvais un instant de puissance et de delire. ’
Mais alors, vieux lubrique, 4 cet age . . .
‘Monsieur, le fait est dur.
II est venu, nous peloter, un gros chien ;
Moi j’avais peur, je I’ai quitt^e k mi-chemin.
C’est dommage.’
Mais alors, tu as ton vautourl
Va t’en te dkrotter les rides du visage ;
Tiens, ma fourchette, d^crasse-toi le crane,
De quel droit payes-tu des experiences comme moi ?
Tiens, voili dix sous, pour la salle-de-bains.
Phlebas, le Phenicien, pendant quinze jours noy^,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Comouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’^tain:
Un courant de sous-mer Temporta tris loin,
Le repassant aux Stapes de sa vie ant6rieure.
Figurez-vous done, c’itait un sort p^nible ;
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.
Whispers o/’ Immortality
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin ;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes I
.f He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate ;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow t -
The ague of the skeleton ;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
Grishkin is nice : her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis ;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat ;
Grishkin has a maisonnette ;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charpa ;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.
The Jew of Malta.
Polyphiloprogenitive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.
In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of to €v.
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.
A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned
But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoflPending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
• • • •
The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence ;
The yoimg are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.
Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
[ ss ]
where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.
Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistillate.
Blest office of the epicene.
Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.
Sweenej Among the Nightingales
(Lfioi, TT^nXrjyfjuxL KOLiploLv TrXqyrjv caoi.
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.
Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled ; and hushed the shrunken seas ;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees
Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganised upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up ;
The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes ;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes ;
The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel nee Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws ;
[ SJ ]
She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league ;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue.
Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaningrin.
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin ;
The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
The Waste Land
1922
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
UipvXXx ri deXeis ; respondcbat ilia: dnodocvelv SeXct)*
For Ezra Pound
il miglioT Jahbto,
The Burial of the Dead
pril is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
'Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us wailn, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over me iiamoergersee
With a shower of rain ; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten , i o
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
• Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
1 read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish ? Son of man, 2 o
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
[6i]
wi your shadow at evening rising to meet you ;
1 will show you fear in a handful of dust. 3 0
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Helmut zu
Mein Insch Kind,
Wo weilest du ^
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago*;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl. ‘
— tet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed^ und Jeer das Meer
Madame Spsostns, famous clairvoyante,
Had a baJcoldTiievertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is jour card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look! J
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations . 50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, ^
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which 1 am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
[ 62 ]
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a wint er dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undoncmmany.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!
‘You who were wjth me in the ships at Mylae I 70
‘That corps e you panted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again 1
‘You! hypocrite lecteurl — mon semblable, — mon frerel’’
L A {jQma oj Chess
The Chair^e'sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion,
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes.
Unguent, powdered, or liquid— troubled, confused
^nd drowned the sense in odours ; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvM dolphin swam
^^ove the antique niantel wa^ displayed
As though a window gaVe upon tfie sylvan scene
Th^c hange o f Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forc^-'yeTthere the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
* Jug Jug.’, to dirty ears^
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls ; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 1 1 o
‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What ?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think/
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
‘What is that noise?’
The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
Nothing again nothing. 1 2 o
‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’)
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not ? Is there nothing m your head?’ ^
But
00 0 0 that Shakespeherian Rag — )
1 It’s so elegant
So intelligent 1 3 ^
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do ?’
‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow ?
[65]
‘What shall we ever do ?’
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
f
Wihen Ill’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, 1 40
Hurry up please its time
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave
you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, 1 swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something 0’ that, I said 1 ^;o
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight
look.
Hurry up please its time
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, 1 said, to look so antique,
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face.
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George . ) 1 60
[ 66 ]
The chemist said it would be all right, but Tve never been
the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
Hurry up please its time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot
gammon.
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot —
Hurry up please its time
Hurry up please its time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night,
good night.
HI. The Fire Sermon
i I t-
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are de-
parted.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. '
Tlje river bears no empty bottles, sanawich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights The nymphs are
departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors , 1 8o
Departed, have lef^no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wepl
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While 1 was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 1 9 0
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
0 the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
(68 ]
200
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et 0 ces Yoix dUnJantSf chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
t Jugjugjugjugjugjug
So rudely forc’d.
-vTereu
Unreal City
Under the brown f og of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
-- Unshaven, with a pocket full of Q^rjants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
< To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the' violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
> I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
' Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
I At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 2 2 o
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
" » The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
' Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretoldllie rest—
[69]
I too awaited the expected guest. 230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
Tl)e meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesircd
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once ;
Exploring hands encounter no defence ; 240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed ;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead. )
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover ; 2 ^0
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass ;
‘Well now that’s done; and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
^ She smoothes her hair with automatic hand
And puts a record on the gramophone.
YThis music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
[70]
26 o
0 City city, 1 can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold " I I ft
Inexplicable splendoui*of Ionian white and gold.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails 270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester’|
Beating oars
The stem was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
[71]
280
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialalaleia 290
Wallala leialala
‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmaid and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. '
‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘ ‘a new start.
I made no comment. What should I resent? ’
‘ On Margate Sands . 300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
0 Lord Thou pluckest
burning
[721
310
IV. Death bj Water
' Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in wlfispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
\Entering the whirlpool.^
( Gentile or Jew
(0 you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was onc^ handsome and tall as you. j
K What the Thunder said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
j He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
» Rock and no water and the sandy road
f The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
I If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
•There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
»There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
[74]
And water
Aspring 350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass sinking
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush gings in thr pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
^ \yho is the third who walks a lways beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I toget her 360
But when I look ahead up the white road
t There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you ?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
J A woman drew her long black hair out tight
\ 7C 1
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings 380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
^Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted
wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home,
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one. 390
Only a cock stood on the rooftrec
Coco rico coco rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence
Then snoke the thunder
Da„
Datta : what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The avrfiil daring of a moment^s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
[76]
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider^
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
Da
Dayai bvam : I have heard the key
Turn in the door onae and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, a^thereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanu
Da
Viamjoia \ The boat responde(
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm , your heart would have responded 42 0
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall 1 at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s^ascose nel foco che ^li affina
Quandofaw uti chehion—0 swallow swallow
Le Prince d' Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments 1 have shored against my ruins
Why then He fit you. Hieronymo's mad againr
Datta. Dayadhvam . DamyaU^jkA
^Imtih shanSn shantih
Notes on the Waste Land
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the
incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss
Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to
Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted. Miss
Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem
much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it
(apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who
think such elucidation of the poem wprth the trouble. To
another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one
which has influenced our generation profoundly ; I mean The
Golden Bough ; 1 have used especially the two volumes Adonis^
AttiSy Osins. Anyone who is acquainted with these works
will immediately recognise in the poem certain references
to vegetation ceremonies.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Line 20, Cf. Ezekiel II, i,
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.
3 1 . V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses j-8.
42. Id. Ill, verse 24.
46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the
Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed
to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of
the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he
is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and
because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage
of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor
and the Merchant appear later; also the ‘crowds of people’,
[ 7 «]
and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with
Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I
associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.
6o. Cf. Baudelaire:
‘Fourmillante cite, cite pleine de reves,
‘Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant. ’
63. Cf. Inferno III,
‘si lunga tratta
di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto
che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.’
64. Cf. Inferno IV, 2^-27:
‘Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
‘non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,
‘che Taura etema face van tremare.’
68 . A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White devil .
76. V. Baudelaiie, Preface to Fleurs du Mai
II. A GAME OF CHESS
77. Cf. Antonjand Cleopatra^ II, ii, 1 . 190.
92. Laquearia. V. Aeneidj I, 726:
dependant lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem
flammis funalia vincunt.
98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost^ IV, 140.
99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses f VI, Philomela.
100. Cf. Partin, 1 . 204.
1 1 5. Cf. Partin, 1 . 19^.
1 1 8 . Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still ?’
126. Cf. Part 1 , 1 . 37,48.
138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware
Woma,
rn. THE FIRE SERMON
1 76. V. Spenser, Prothalamion,
192. Cf. TTifi Tempest^ I, ii.
196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistresi
197. Cf. Day, Parliament ojBees:
‘When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
‘A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
‘ Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
‘Where all shall see her naked skin . . . ’
199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which
these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney,
Australia.
202 V. Verlaine,
210. The currants were quoted at a price ‘carnage and
insurance free to London’ ; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were
to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a
‘character’, is yet the most important personage in the
poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant,
seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the
latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples,
so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in
Tiresias. What Tiresias seesy in fact, is the substance of the
poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropo-
logical interest:
‘. . . Cum lunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus*, dixisse, ‘voluptas ’
Ilia negat ; placuit quae sit sententia docti
[80]
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota,
Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
Egerat autumnos ; octavo rursus eosdem
Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae*,
Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortcm in contraria mutet,
Nunc quoque vos feriam ! ’ percussis anguibus isdem
Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
Arbiter hie igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
Dicta lovis firmat ; gravius Satumia iusto
Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
ludicis aetema damnavit lumina nocte,
At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I
had in mind the ‘longshore’ or ‘dory’ fisherman, who re-
turns at nightfall.
2^3. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefeld.
2^7. V. The Tempesty as above.
264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one
of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed De-
molition ojNineteen Ci^ Churches: (P, S. King & Son, Ltd.).
266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins
here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V.
Gotterddmmerungy III, i: the Rhine-daughters.
279. V. Froude, Elizabethy Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De
Quadra to Philip of Spain:
‘In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on
B.p. [ 81 ]
the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and my-
self on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and
went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot
there was no reason why they should not be married if the
queen pleased.*
2 9 3 . Cf . Purgatorio, V. 1 3 3 : ♦
‘Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia ;
‘Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma. ’
307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: ‘to Cailliage then I
came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine
ears.’
308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon
(which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the
Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found
translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in
Translation (Harvard Onental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collo-
cation of these two representatives of eastern and western
asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not
an accident.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the
journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
(see Miss Wesson’s book) and the present decay of eastern
Europe.
This is Tiirdm aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-
thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says
(Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) ‘it is most at
home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. ... Its
notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in
purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they
are unequalled.’ Its Vater-dripping song’ is justly cele-
brated.
360. The following lines were stimulated by the account
of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I
think one of Shackleton’s) : it was related that the party of
explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the con-
stant delusion that there was one more member than could
actually be counted.
366-76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Ebck ms Chaos: ‘Schon ist
halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas
auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fahrt betrunken im heiligen
Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken
imd hymnisch wie Dmitri KaramasofF sang. Ueber diese
Lieder lacht der Burger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher
hortsie mitTranen.’
401. ‘Datta, dayadhvam, damyata’ (Give, sympathise,
control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in
the Bnhadaranjaka — Upanishady 5^, i . A traaslation is found
in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p 489.
407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi:
‘. . . they’ll remarry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’
[83]
41 1 . Cf. Inferno f XXXm, 46:
‘ed io sentii chiavar Tuscio di sotto
airorribile torre.’
Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Kealitj^ p. 346.
‘My external sensations are no less private to myself than are
my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience
falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside ;
aqd, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to
the others which surround it. . . In brief, regarded as an
existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each
is peculiar and private to that soul. ’
424. V. Weston: From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the
Fisher King.
427. V. FurgatorWy XXVI, 148.
‘ “ Ara VOS prec per aquella valor
“que VOS guida al som de Tescalina,
‘ ‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor. ^ ’
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina. ’
428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and
m.
429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.
43 1 . V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedj.
433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an
Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding' is our
equivalent to this word.
The Hollow Men
192 s
Mistah Kurtz — be dead.
The Hollow Men
A pennjJoT the Old Guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiecejilled with straw.
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our di^^ellar
Shape without form, shade without colou
Paralysed force, gesture without motion ;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as los"-
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyw I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s drean^ingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
[87]
---Sunlight on a broken column
TTiere, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no n^rer
In death’s dream kingdum
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed stave
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer —
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
111
This is the dead lauid
This is cactus l^d j
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
[88 ]
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no e^es here
In this valley of dyii^ stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid rive
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual sV
Multifoliate rose
- Of death's twilight kingdom
The ho pe only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the pricldy pear
At Jive o* clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desir#*
And the spasm
Between the potepcv
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent!^
Falls the Shadow
For Thine ts the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not witha bang but a whimper.
[90]
AshWednesdaj
1930
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because 1 do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agM eagle stretch its wings ?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign ?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because 1 know 1 shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
(Consequently 1 rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
[ 93 ]
Ind pray to God to have mercy upon us
Vnd I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done agaii?
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
[ 94 ]
II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of kiy skull And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady i ^
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And 1 who am here dissembled ‘
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd. '
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portioa»
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten »
And would be forgotten, so 1 would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Tom and most whole
[9S]
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of
sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity < ^
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
[ 96 ]
///
At the first turning of the second stair
1 turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devfl of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below ; \ ^
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggM, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agM shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the fig’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drcst in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair ;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the tliird stair,
Fadmg, fading; strength beyond hope and despairt ^
Climbing the third stair.
Lord, 1 am not worthy
Lord, 1 am not worthy
but speak the word only. /
E.F. [ 97 ]
IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
fei Ignorance and in knowledge of eternal dolour K
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the
springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are tlie years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking,
wearing
White light folded, sheathed about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
[98]
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but
spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile
V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard ;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
Jhe world and for the world ;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the World the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word
0 my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time |
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and
deny the voice
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose
thee,
Those who are tom on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those
who wait
[ 100 ]
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who w^ill not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose
0 my people, what have I done unto thee.
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert between the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-
seed.
0 my people.
[ 101 ]
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
Ifi this brief transit w^here the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
[. 02 ]
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of
the garden.
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the rivef, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee,
Ariel Poems
Journey of the Magi
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter. *
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying dovm in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women.
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night.
Sleeping in snatches.
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation ; ^
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the dark-
ness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel.
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place ; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember.
And I would do it again, but set down*
Jhis set down
This : were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different ; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
A Song for Simeon
Lord, the Roman hyacinths arc blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills ;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the bick of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my
children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.
According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
[ 109]
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and
prayer.
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
Animula
* Issues from the hand of God, the pimple soul*
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm ,
Moving between the legs of tables and of chaifa,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys.
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the comer of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea ;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray ;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day ;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of ‘is and seems’
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the En^clopaedia Bntannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood.
Shadow' of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
[III ]
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room ;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.'
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the y(
trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
Marina
Quis hie locus, quae
regio, quae mundi plaga?
What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
0 my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird,
meaning
Death
Those who sit in the stye of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place
What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger —
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the
eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious^ unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me ; let me
Resign my life for tliis life, my speech for that unspoken.
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my
timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
Ur^nished Poems
Sweeny Agonistes
Fragments of an Anstophanic Melodrama
Orestes: You Jon't ice them,jou donU — but I see them :
they are bunting me down, 1 must move on.
Choephoroi.
Hence the soul cannot be possessed oj the divine union,
until it has divested itself of the love of created beings,
St. John of the Cross.
DUSTY:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
DUSTY:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
dusty:
DORIS:
Fragment of a Prologue
DUSTY, DORIS.
How about Pereira?
What about Pereira?
I don’t care.
You don’t care!
Who pays the^ent?
Yes he pays the rent
Well some men don’t and some men do
Some men do'n’t and you know who
You can have Pereira
What about Pereira ?
He’s no gentleman, Pereira:
You can’t trust him!
Well that’s true.
He’s no gentleman if you can’t trust him
And if you can’t trust him —
Then you never know what he’s going to do.
No it wouldn’t do to be too nice to Pereira.
Now Sam’s a gentleman through and through.
I like Sam
/ like Sam
Yes and Sam’s a nice boy too.
He’s a funny fellow
He IS a funny fellow
He’s like a fellow once I knew.
He could make you laugh,
Sam can make you laugh :
Sam’s all right
But Pereira won’t do.
We can’t have Pereira
[ ”9 ]
DUSTY: Well what you going to do t
telephone: Ting a ling ling
Ting a ling ling
DUSTY: That’s Pereira
DORIS: Yes that’s Pereira
DUSTY : Well what you going to do ?
TELEPHONi Ting a ling ling
Ting a ling ling
DUSTY : That’s Pereira
DORIS : Well can’t you stop that horrible noise ?
Pick up the receiver
DUSTY: What’ll I say!
DORIS: Say what you like: say I’m ill,
Say I broke my leg on the stairs
Say we’ve had a fire
DUSTY : Hello Hello are you there ?
Yes this is Miss Dorrance’s^at —
Oh Mr. Pereira is that you ? how do you do I
Oh I’m so sorry. 1 am so sorry
But Doris came home with a terrible chill
No, just a chill
Oh I think it’s only a chill
Yes indeed I hope so too —
Well I hope we shan’t have to call a doctor
Doris just hates having a doctor
She says will you ring up on Monday
She hopes to be all right on Monday
I say do you mind if I ring off now
She’s got her feet in mustard and water
I said I’m giving her mustard and water
All right, Monday you’ll phone through,
[no]
DORIS:
DUSTY;
DORIS;
dusty:
DORIS;
dusty:
DORIS:
DUSTY;
DORIS:
DUSTY;
DORIS:
DUSTY;
DORIS;
DUSTY:
DORIS;
Yes ril tell her. Good bye. Goooood bye.
Tm sure, that’s very kind of/ou.
Ah-h-h
Now I’m going to cut the cards for to-night.
Oh guess what the first is
First is. What is?*
The King of Clubs
That’s Pereira
It might be Sweeney
It’s Pereira
It might juAt as well be Sweeney
Well anyway it’s very queer.
Here’s the four of diamonds, what’s that mean
(reading) * A small sum of money, or a present
Of wearing apparel, or a party’ .
That’s queer too.
Here’s the three. What’s that mean?
‘News of an absent friend’ . — Pereira!
The Queen of Hearts! — Mrs. Porter!
Or it might be you
Or it might be you
dusty:
The two of spadesl
That’s the Coffin!!
DORIS: That’s the Coffin?
Oh good heavens what’ll I do ?
J ust before a party too 1
DUSTY : Well it needn’t be yours, it may mean a friend.
DORIS : No it’s mine. I’m sure it’s mfne.
I dreamt of weddings all last night.
Yes it’s mine, I know it’s mine.
Oh good heavens what’ll I do.
Well I’m not going to draw any more,
You cut for luck. You cut for luck.
It might break the spell. You cut for luck.
DUSTY : The Knave of Spades
DORIS: That’ll be Snow
DUSTY : Or it might be Swarts
DORIS: Or It might be Snow
DUSTY : It’s a funny thing how I draw court cards —
DORIS : There’s a lot in the way you pick them up
DUSTY : There’s an awful lot in the way you feel
DORIS : Sometimes they’ll tell you nothing at all
DUSTY : You’ve got to know what you want to ask them
DORIS : You’ve got to know what you want to know
DUSTY : It’s no use asking them too much
DORIS : It’s no use asking more than once
DUSTY : Sometimes they’re no use at all.
DORIS : I’d like to know about that coffin.
DUSTY : Well I never! What did I tell you?
Wasn’t I saying I always draw court cards?
The Knave of Hearts !
( Whistle outside of the window. )
Well 1 never
What a coincidence! Cards are queer 1
(Whistle again.)
DORIS: Is that Sam?
dusty: Ofcourse it’s Sam!
DORIS : Of course, the Knave of Hearts is Sam!
DUSTY (leaning out oj the window): Hello Sam!
WAUCHOPE: Hello dear
How many’s up there?
DUSTY : Nobody’s up here
How many’s down there?
WAUCHOPE: Four of us here.
Wait till I put the car round the corner
We’ll be right up
DUSTY : All right, come up.
DUSTY (to DORIS): Cards are queer.
DORIS : I’d like to know about that coffin.
Knock Knock Knock
Knock Knock Knock
Knock
Knock
Knock
DORIS. DUSTY. WAUCHOPE. HORSFALL. KLIPSTEIN.
KRUMPACKER.
WAUCHOPE: Hello Doris! Hello Dusty! How do you do!
How come? how come? will you permit me—
I think you girls both know Captain Horsfall —
We want you to meet two friends of ours,
American gentlemen here on business.
Meet Mr. Klipstein. Meet Mr. Krumpacker.
[123 ]
KLiPSTEiN : How do you do
KRUMPACKER : How do you do
KLIPSTEIN ; I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance
KRUMPACKER: Extremely pleased to become acquainted
KLIPSTEIN : Sam — I should say Loot Sam Wauchope
KRUMPACKER: Of the Canadian Expeditionary Force—
KLIPSTEIN : The Loot has told us a lot about you.
KRUMPACKER: We were all in the war together
Klip and me and the Cap and Sam.
KLIPSTEIN : Yes we did our bit, as you folks say,
ril tell the world we got the Hun on the run
KRUMPACKER: What about that poker game? eh what
Sam?
What about that poker game in Bordeaux ?
Yes Miss Dorrance you get Sam
To tell about that poker game in Bordeaux.
DUSTY : Do you know London well, Mr, Krumpacker?
KLIPSTEIN. No we never been here before
KRUMPACKER: We hit this town last night for the first
time
KLIPSTEIN : And I certainly hope it won’t be the last
time.
DORIS: You like London, Mr. Klipstein?
KRUMPACKER: Do we like London? do we like London!
Do we like London! ! Eh what Klip?
KLIPSTEIN; Say, Miss — er — uh — London’s swell.
We like London fine.
KRUMPACKER : Perfectly slick.
DUSTY ; Why don’t you come and live here then ?
KLIPSTEIN : Well, no, Miss — er — you haven’t quite got it
(I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name —
[>H]
But I’m very pleased to meet you all the same) —
London’s a little too gay for us
Yes I’ll say a little too gay.
krumpacker; Yes London’s a little too gay for us
Don’t think I mean anything coarse —
But I’m afraid we couldn’t stand the pace
What about it Klip?
KLiPSTEiN : You said it, krum.
London’s a slick place, London’s a swell place,
London’s a fine place to come on a visit —
krumpacker: Specially when you got a real live Britisher
A guy like Sam to show you around.
Sam of course is at home in London,
And he’s promised to show us around.
Fragment oj an Agon
SWEENEY. WAUCHOPE. HORSFALL. KLIPSTEIN.
KRUMPACKER. SWARTS. SNOW. DORIS. DUSTY.
SWEENEY : ril carry you off
To a cannibal isle.
DORIS: You’ll be the cannibal!
SWEENEY : You’ll be the missionary!
You’ll be my little seven stone missionary’
I’ll gobble you up I’ll be the cannibal.
DORIS : You’ll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?
SWEENEY: I’ll be the cannibal.
D ORIS : I’ll be the missionary .
I’ll convert you I
SWEENEY: I’ll convert /ou!
Into a stew.
A nice Uttle, white little, missionary stew
DORIS: You wouldn’t eat me!
SWEENEY: Yes I’d eat you!
In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender
little.
Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.
You see this egg
You see this egg
Well that’s life on a crocodile isle.
There’s no telephones
There’s no gramophones
There’s no motor cars
No two-seaters, no six-seaters,
No Citroen, no Rolls-Royce,
Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.
I J26 1
Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way
And the sea the other way,
Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.
Nothing at all but three things
DORIS: What things?
SWEENEY: Birth, and copulation and deaU.
That’s all, that's all, that’s all, that’s all,
Birth, and copulation, and death.
DORIS: I’d be bored.
SWEENEY : You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
DORIS: I’d be bored.
SWEENEY: You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I’ve been born, and once is enough.
You don’t remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.
SONG BY WAUCHOPE AND HORSFALL
SWARTS AS TAMBO. SNOW AS BONES
Under the bamboo
Bamboo bamboo
Under the bamboo tree
Two live as one
One live as two
Two Jive as three
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tiee.
Where the breadfruit Jail
And the penguin call
And the sound is the sound of the sea
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Where the Gauguin maids
In the banyan shades
Wear palmleaj drapery
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree.
Tell me in what part of the wood
Do you want to flirt with me?
Under the breadfruit, banyan, palmleaj
Or under the bamboo tree?
Any old tree will do for me
Any old wood is just as good
Any old isle is just my style
Any fresh egg
Any fresh egg
And the sound of the coral sea,
DORIS : 1 don't like eggs ; I never liked eggs ;
And I don’t like life on your crocodile isle,
[ns]
SONG BY KLIPSTEIN AND KRUMPACKER
SNOW AND SWARTS AS BEFORE
Mj little island girl
Mj little island girl
Vm going to stay withyou
And we wonf worry what to do
We wont have to catch any trains
And we won t go home when it rams
We'll gather hibiscus flowers
For It won t be minutes but hours
For It won't be hours bot years
[ And the morning
And the evening
And noontime
And night
Morning
Evening
Noontime
[ Night
DORIS : That’s not life, that’s no life
Why I’d just as soon be dead.
SWEENEY; That’s what life is. Just is
DORIS: What is?
diminuendo
What’s that life is?
SWEENEY; Life is death.
I knew a man once did a girl in —
DORIS : Oh Mr. Sweeney, please don’t talk,
I cut the cards before you came
And I drew the coffin
You drew the coffin ?
WARTS :
DORIS : 1 drew the COFFIN very last card,
I don’t care for such conversation
A woman runs a terrible risk.
SNOW : Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.
I assure you, Sir, we are very interested.
SWEENEY : I knew a man once did a girl in
Any man might do a girl in
Any man has to, needs to, wants to
Once in a lifetime*, do a girl in.
Well he kept her tliere in a bath
With a gallon of lysol in a bath
SWARTS ; These fellows always get pinched in the end.
NOW : Excuse me, they dont all get pinched in the end.
What about them bones on Epsom Heath?
1 seen that in the papers
You seen it in the papers
They don’t all get pinched in the end.
DORIS; A woman runs a terrible risk.
SNO w : Let Mr. Sweeney continue his storj .
SWEENEY : This one didn’t get pinched in the end
But that’s another story too.
This went on for a couple of months
Nobody came
And nobody went
But he took in the milk and he paid the rent.
SWARTS: What did he do?
All that time, what did he do ?
SWEENEY : What did he do! what did he do?
That don’t apply.
Talk to live men about what they do.
He used to come and see me sometimes
I *30]
rd give him a drink and cheer him up,
L>ORis: Cheer him up?
DUSTY; Cheer him up?
SWEENEY: Well here again that don’t apply
But I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you.
But here’s wh^t I was going to say.
He didn’t know if he was alive
and the girl was dead
He didn’t know if the girl was alive
and he was dead
He didn’t know if they both were alive
or both were dead
If he WdS alive then the milkman wasn’t
and the rent-collector wasn’
And if they were alive then he was dead.
There wasn’t any joint
There wasn’t any joint
For when you’re alone
When you’re alone like he was alone
You’re either or neither
1 tell you again it don’t apply
Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is death
I gotta use words when 1 talk to you
But if you understand or if you don’t
That’s nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we gotta do
We’re gona sit here and drink this booze
We’re gona sit here and have a tune
We’re gona stay and we’re gona go
And somebody’s gotta pay the rent
[ ]
DORIS; 1 know who
SWEENEY: But that’s nothing to me and nothing to you.
PULL CHORUS: WAUCHOPE, HORSFALL, KLIPSTEIN,
KRUMPACKER
When you’re alone in the middle of the night and
you wake in a sweat and a hell of a fright
When you’re alone in the middle of the bed and
you wake like someone hit you in the head
You’ve had a cream of a nightmare dream and
you’ve got the hoo-ha’s coming to you.
Hoo hoo hoo
You dreamt you waked up at seven o’clock and it’s
foggy and it’s damp and it’s dawn and it’s dark
And you wait for a knock and the turning of a lock
for you know the hangman’s waiting for you.
And perhaps you’re alive
And perhaps you’re dead
Hoo ha ha
Hoo ha ha
Hoo
Hoo
Hoo
Knock Knock Knock
Knock Knock Knock
Knock
Knock
Knock
Coriolan
/. Triumphal March
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone^ oakleaves, horses^ heels
Over the paving.
And the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.
How many? Count them. And such a press of people.
We hardly knew ours^ves that day, or knew the City.
This is the way to the temple, and we so many crowding the
way.
So many waiting, how’ many waiting? what did it matter, on
such a day?
Are they coming? No, not yet. You can see some eagles.
And hear the trumpets.
Here they come. Is he coming?
The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving.
We can wait with our stools and our sausages.
What comes first? Can you see? Tell us. It is
5,800,000 rifles and carbines,
1 02 ,000 machine guns,
28.000 trench mortars,
5 3 , 0 0 0 field and heavy guns ,
I cannot tell how many projectiles, mines and fuses,
13.000 aeroplanes,
24.000 aeroplane engines,
50.000 ammunition waggons,
now 55,000 army waggons,
11.000 field kitchens,
1 , 1 50 field bakeries.
What a time that took. Will it be he now? No,
Those are the golf club Captains, these the Scouts,
And now the sociiti gjmnastique de Pois^
[ uj]
And now come the Mayor and the Liverymen. Look
There he is now, look:
There is no interrogation in his eyes
Or in the hands, quiet over the horse’s neck,
And the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent.
0 hidden under the dove’s wing, hidden in the turtle’s
breast.
Under the palmtree at noon, under the running water
At the still point of the turning world. 0 hidden.
Now they go up to the temple. Then the sacrifice.
Now come the virgins bearing urns, urns containing
Dust
Dust
Dust of dust, and now
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels
Over the paving.
That is all we could see. But how many eagles ! and how
many trumpets !
(And Easter Day, we didn’t get to the country,
So we took young Cyril to church. And they rang a bell
And he said right out loud, crumpets.)
Don’t throw away that sausage.
It’ll come in handy. He’s artful. Please, will you
Give us a light?
Light
Light
Et les soldatsjaisaient la haie? ILS LA FAISAIENT,
II. Difficulties of a Statesman
CRY what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass: comprehending
The Companions of the Bath, the Knights of the British
Empire, the Cavaliers,
0 Cavaliers! of the Legion of Honour,
The Order of the Black Eagle (ist and 2nd class),
And the Order of the Rising Sun.
Cry cry what shall I cry ?
The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees, select
committees and sub-committees.
One secretary will do for several committees.
What shall I cry?
Arthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator
At a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual incre-
ments of five shillings
To two pounds ten a week ; with a bonus of thirty shillings
at Christmas
And one week’s leave a year.
A committee has been appointed to nominate a commission
of engineers
To consider the Water Supply.
A commission is appointed
For Public Works, chiefly the question of rebuilding the
fortifications.
A commission is appointed
To confer with a Volscian commission
About perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and
Have appointed a joint committee to protest against the
reduction of orders.
Meanwhile the guards shake dice on the marches
And the frogs (0 Mantuan) croak in the marshes.
Fireflies flare against the faint sheet ligiitning
What shall I cry?
Mother mother
Here is the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking
remarkably Roman,
Remarkably like each other, lit up successively by the flare
Of a sweaty torchbearer, yawning.
0 hidden under the. . . Hidden under the. . . Where the
dove’s foot rested and locked for a moment,
A still moment, repose of noon, set under the upper
branches of noon’s widest tree
Under the breast feather stirred by the small wind after noon
There the cyclamen spreads its wings, there the clematis
droops over the lintel
0 mother (not among these busts, all correctly 'Inscribed)
1 a tired head among these heads
Necks strong to bear them
Noses strong to break the wind
Mother
May we not be some time, almost now, together,
If the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations,
Are now observed
May we not be
0 hidden
Hidden in the stillness of noon, in the silent croaking night.
Come with the sweep of the little bat’s wing, with the
small flare of the firefly or lightning bug,
[•38]
‘Rising and falling, crowned with dust’ , the small creatures,
The small creatures chirp thinly through the dust, through
the night,
0 mother
What shall I cry?
We demand a committee, a representative committee,
committee of investigation
Resign Resign Resign
Minor Poems
Eyes that last I saw in tears
Eyes that last I saw in tears
Through division
Here in death’s dream kingdom
The golden vision reappears
I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction
This is my affliction
Eyes I shall not see again
Eyes of decision
Eyes I shall not see unless
At the door of death’s other kingdom
Where, as in this.
The eyes outlast a little while
A little while outlast the tears
Ur a a no in derision.
[ 143 ]
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells
Swinging between life and death
Here, in death’s dream kingdom
The waking echo of confusing strife
Is it a dream or something else
When the surface of the blackened river
Is a face that sweats with tears ?
I saw across the blackened river
The camp fire shake with alien spears.
Here, across death’s other river
The Tartar horsemen shake their spears.
[ ‘ 44 ]
Five-Finger Exercises
L Lines to a Persian Cat
The songsters of the air repair
To the green fields of Russell Square.
Beneath the\rees there is no ease
For the dull brain, the sharp desires
And the quick eyes of Woolly Bear.
There is no relief but in grief.
O when will the creaking heart cease ?
When will the broken chair give ease?
Why will the summer day delay?
When will Time flow away ?
IL Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier
In a brown field stood a tree
And the tree Wcis crookt and dry.
In a black sky, from a green cloud
Natural forces shriek’d aloud.
Screamed, rattled, muttered endlessly.
Little dog was safe and warm
Under a cretonne eiderdown.
Yet the field was cracked and brown
And the tree was cramped and dry.
Follicle dogs and cats all must
Jellicle cats and dogs all must
Like undertakers, come to dust.
Here a little dog I pause
Heaving up my prior paws.
Pause, and sleep endlessly.
[ 145: ]
IJL Lines to a Duck tn the Park
The long light shakes across the lake ,
The forces of the morning quake,
The dawn is slant across the lawn.
Here is no eft or mortal snake
But only sluggish duck and drake.
I have seen the morning shine,
I have had the Bread and Wine,
Let the feathered mortals take
That which is their mortal due.
Pinching bread and finger too.
Easier had than squirming worm ;
For I know, and so should you
That soon the enquiring worm shall try
Our well-preserved complacency.
IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.
How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!
(Everyone wants to know him)
With his musical sound
And his Baskerville Hound
Which, just at a word from his master
Will follow you faster and faster
And tear you limb from limb.
How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!
Who is worshipped by all waitresses
(They regard him as something apart)
While on his palate fine he presses
The juice of the gooseberry tart.
[ 146 1
How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!
(Everyone wants to know him).
He has 999 canaries
And round his head finches and fairies
In jubilant rapture skim.
How debghtful to meet Mr. Hodgson!
(Everyone wants to meet him).
V, Lines for Cuscascarawaj and Muza Murad Ali Beg
How unpleasant to pieet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cu.,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot 1
With a bobtail cur
In a coat of fur
And a porpentine cat
And a wopsical hat:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
(Whether his mouth be open or shut).
I H7 ]
Landscapes
I. New Hampshire
Children’s voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and tfie fruit-time
Golden head, crimson head.
Between the green tip and the root.
Black wing, brown wing, hoter over ;
Twenty years and the spring is over ;
To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,
Cover me over, light-in-Ieaves ;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling, swing.
Spring, sing.
Swing up into the apple-tree.
[ *48 ]
II. Virginia
Red river, red river.
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once ? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees.
White trees, wait, wait.
Delay, decay. Living, living.
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me :
Red river, river, river.
III. Usk
Do not suddenly break the branch, or
Hope to find
The white hart behind the white well.
Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell
Old enchantments. Let them sleep.
‘Gently dip, but net too deep’,
Lift your eyes
Where the roads dip and where the roads rise
Seek only there
Where the grey light meets the green air
The hermit’s chapel, the pilgrim’s prayer.
L J
IV. Kannoch, bj Glencoe
Here the crow starves, here the patient stag
Breeds for the rifle. Between the soft moor
And the soft sky, scarcely room
To leap or soar. Substance crumbles, in*the thin
Moon cold or muun hot. The road winds in
Listlessness of ancient war.
Languor of broken steel.
Clamour of confused wrong, apt
In silence. Memory is strong
Beyond the bone. Pride snapped,
Shadow of pride is long, in the long pass
No concurrence of bone.
K Cape Ann
0 quick quick quick, quick hear the song-sparrow,
Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow
At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance
Of the goldfinch at noon. Leave to chance
The Black! mmian warbler, the shy on^. Hail
With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bob-white
Dodging by bay-bush. Follow the feet
Of the walker, the water- thrush. Follow the flight
Of the dancing arrow, the purple martin. Greet
In silence the bullbat. All are delectable. Sweet sweet sweet
But resign this land at the end, resign it
To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull.
The palaver is finished.
Lines for an Old Man
The tiger in the tiger-pit .
Is not more irritable than I.
The whipping tail is not more still
Than when I smell the enemy
Writhing in tlie essential blood
Or dangling from the friendly tree.
When I lay bare the tooth of wit
The hissing oVer the arched tongue
Is more affectionate than hate.
More bitter than the love of youth.
And inaccessible by the young.
Reflected from my golden eye
The dullard knows that he is mad.
Tell me if I am not glad !
Choruses from ‘The Rock'
/
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
0 perpetual revolution of configured stars,
0 perpetual recurrence of determined seasojis,
0 world of spring anl autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness ;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence ;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death.
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge ?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us fardier from God and nearer to the Dust,
1 journeyed to London, to the timekept City,
Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.
There I was told: we have too many churches.
And too few chop-houses. There I was told:
Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church
In the place where they work, but where they spend their
Sundays.
In the City, we need no bells:
Let them waken the suburbs.
I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told :
We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor
To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.
If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers
In industrial districts, there I was told
Of economic laws.
In the pleasant countryside, there it seemed
That the country now is only fit % picnics.
And the Church does not seem to be wanted
In country or in suburb ; and in the town
Only for important weddings.
CHORUS LEADER:
Silence! and preserve respectful distance.
For I perceive approaching
The Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.
The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.
He who has seen what has happened
And who sees what is to happen.
The Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.
The God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.
Enter the rock, led bj a BOY:
THE rock:
The lot of man is ceaseless labour,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
1 say to you: Make perjectjour will,
1 say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches ;
The men you are in these times deride
What has been done of good, you find explanations
To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.
Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics,
The desert is not only around the comer,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heai t of your brother. )
The good man is the builder, if he build what is good
I will show you the things that are now being done,
And some of the things that were long ago done,
That you may take heart. Make perfect your will.
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.
The lights Jade; in the semi-darkness the voices oj workmen
are heard chanting.
In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
Ihere are hands and machines
[ J
And claj for new brick
And lime for new mortar
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Everj man to his work.
Now a group of workmen is silhouetted against the dim shj.
From farther awaj, thej are answered hy 'roices of the
UNEMPLOYED.
No man has hired us
With pocketed hands
And lowered faces
We stand about in open places
And shiver in unlit rooms.
Only the wind moves
Over empy fields, untilled
Where the plough rests, at an angle
To the furrow. In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale. In this land
No man has hired us.
Our life is unwelcome, our death
Unmentioned in ^The Times*.
[160]
Chant of workmen again.
The river fows, the seasons turn,
The sparrow and starling have no time to waste.
If men do not build
How shall they live?
When thejield is tilled
And the wheat is bread
They shall not die in a shortened bed
And a narrow sheet. In this street
There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no enc
But noise without speech, food without taste.
Without delay, without haste
We would build the beginning and the end of this street.
We build the meaning :
A Church for all
And a job for each
Each man to his work
II
Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of god,
being built upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief
cornerstone.
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a
ruined house?
Where many are bom to idleness, to frittered lives and
squalid deaths, embittered scorn in honeyless hives,
And those who would build and restore turn out the
palms of their hands, or look in vain towards foreign
lands for alms to be more or the urn to be filled.
Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed
and wonder whether and how you may be budded
together for a habitation of god in the Spirit, the
Spirit which moved on the face of the waters like a
lantern set on the back of a tortoise.
And some say: ‘How can we love our neighbour? For love
must be made real in act, as desire unites with de-
sired ; we have only our labour to give and our labour
is not required.
We wait on comers, with nothing to bring but the songs
we can sing which nobody wants to hear sung ;
Waiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than
You, have you built well, have you forgotten the corner-
stone?
Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of
men to god.
fl 62 ]
‘Our citizenship is in Heaven’ ; yes, but that is the model
and type for your citizenship upon earth.
When your fathers fixed the place of god,
And settled all the inconvenient saints,
Apostles, martyrs, irfa kind of Whipsnade,
Then they could set about imperial expansion
Accompanied by industrial development.
Exporting iron, coal and cotton goods
And intellectual enlightenment
And everything, including capital
And several versions of the Word of god :
The British race assured of a mission
Performed it, but left much at home unsure.
Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either
rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always de-
caying, •^and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we sufiFer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of
GOD,
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the in-
heritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he
stands alone on the other side of death,
But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and
ill that was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in
humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers ;
f>63l
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts
as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to
gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever de
caying within and attacked from without ;
For this is the law of life ; and you must remember that
while there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of ad-
versity they will decry it.
^ What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of god.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of god,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads.
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance.
But all dash to and fro in motor cars.
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together,
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions. )
Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore ;
Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste ;
Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone.
Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.
in
The Word of the lord came unto me, saying;
0 miserable cities of designing men,
0 wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities, ,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
1 have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver,
I have given you ‘my- Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of god,
Much is your building, but not the House of god.
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated
roofing.
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?
1ST MALE voice:
A Cry from the East;
What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?
Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten
To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?
There shall be left the broken chimney.
The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron,
In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs.
Where My Word is unspoken.
f >65]
2ND MALE VOICE:
A Cry from the North, from the West and from the Soutli
Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City ;
Where My Word is unspoken,
In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels
The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit.
The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court.
And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people ;
Their only naonument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls’.
CHORUS:
We build in vain unless the lord build with us.
Can you keep the City that the lord keeps not with
you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the lord.
Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?
I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy
sanctuary,
I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.
Though you have shelters and institutions,
Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid.
Subsiding basements where the rat breeds
Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors
Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s ;
When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this
city?
I *66 1
Do you huddle close together because you love each
other?^
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other* ? or ‘This is a com-
munity’ ?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the aesert.
0 my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
0 weariness of men who turn from god
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action.
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited.
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred,
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator.
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity ;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.
IV
There are those who would build the Temple,
And those who prefer that the Temple should not be
built.
In the days of Nehemiah the Prophet
There was no exception to the general rule
In Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan,
He served the wine to the king Artaxerxes,
And he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem ;
And the King gave him leave to depart
That he might rebuild the city.
So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem,
And there, by the dragon’s well, by the dung gate.
By the fountain gate, by the king’s pool,
Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire ;
No place for a beast to pass.
There were enemies without to destroy him.
And spies and self-seekers within.
When he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the
wall.
So they built as men must build
With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.
( '68 1
V
0 Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention
and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked.
Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and
Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public
spirit and zeal.
Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gam:
and from the friend who has something to lose.
Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: ‘The
trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster . ’
Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are
like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in
the sunlight.
And the others run about like dogs, fall of enterprise,
sniffing and barking: they say, ‘This house is a nest
of serpents, let us destroy it.
And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the
Christians . ’ And these are not justified , nor the others .
And they write innumerable books ; being too vam and
distracted for silence: seeking every one after his
own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in
the home: and if they are not in the home, they are
not in the City.
The man who has builded during the day would return to
his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of
silence, and doze before he sleeps.
But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore
some must labour, and othen must hold the spears.
[ >69]
VI
It is hard for those who have never known persecution,
And who have never known a Christian,
To believe these tales of Christian persecution.
It is hard for Ithose who live near a B^k
To doubt the security of their money.
It is hard for those who live near a Police Station
To believe in the triumph of violence. .
Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World
And that lions no longer need keepers?
Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be ?
Do you need to be told that even such modest attain-
ments
As you can boast in the way of polite society
Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their
significance?
Men! polish your teeth on rising and retiring;
Women! polish your fingernails:
You polish the tooth of the dog and the talon of the cat.
Why should men love the Church ? Why should they love
her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they
would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where
they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts .
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need
to be good.
[ '70 ]
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.
And the Son of Man was not crucified once for all,
The blood of the martyrs not shed once for all,
The lives of the Saints not given once for all :
But the Son of Ma» is crucified always
And there shall be Martyrs and Saints.
And if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps
We must first build the steps ;
And if the Temple is to be cast down
We must first build the Temple.
VII
In the beginning god created the world. Waste and void,
Waste and void. And darkness was upon the face of
And when there were men, in their various ways, they
struggled in torment towards god
Blindly and vainly, for man is a vain thing, and man with-
out GOD is a seed upon the wind: driven this way
and that, and finding no place of lodgement and ger-
mination.
They followed the light and the shadow, and the light led
them forward to light and the shadow led them to
darkness.
Worshipping snakes or trees, worshipping devils rather
than nothing: crying for life beyond life, for ecstasy
not of the flesh.
Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face
of the deep.
And the Spirit moved upon the face of the water.
And men who turned towards the light and were known of
the light
Invented the Higher Religions ; and the Higher Religions
were good
And led men from light to light, to knowledge of Good and
Evil.
But their light was ever surrounded and shot with darkness
As the air of temperate seas is pierced by the still dead
breath of the Arctic Current ;
And they came to an end, a dead end stirred with a flicker
of life,
[ >71 ]
And they came to the withered ancient look of a child that
has died of starvation.
Prayer wheels, worship of the dead, denial of this world,
affirmation of rites with forgotten meanings
In the restless wind-whipped sand, or the hills where the
wind will not ^t the snow rest.
Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face
of the deep.
Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time
and of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call
history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a
moment in time but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that mo-
ment; for without the meaning there is no time, and
that moment of time gave the meaning.
Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light,
in the Jight of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their
negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always be-
fore, selfish and purblind as ever before.
Yet always strugglmg, always reaffirming, always resuming
their march on the way that was lit by the light ;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet
following no other way.
But It seems that something has happened that has never
happened before: though we know not just when, or
why. or how, or where.
Men have left god not for other gods, they say, but for no
god ; and this has never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing
first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or
Race, or Dialectic.
The Church disowmed, the tower overthrovm, the bells up-
turned, what have we to do
But stand with empty hands and palms tunied upwards
In an age which advances progressively backwards ?
VOICE OF THE UNEMPLOYED (afar ojf)
In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale, . . .
CHORUS:
what does the world say, does the whole world stray in
high-powered cars on a by-pass way ?
VOICE OF THE UNEMPLOYED (more fawtlj):
In this land
No man has hired us. .. .
CHORUS:
Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face
of the deep.
Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the
Church?
When the Church is no longer regarded, not even op-
posed, and men have forgotten
All gods except Usury, Lust and Power.
[• 74 ]
Vlll
O Father we welcome your words,
And we will take heart for the future,
Remembering the past.
The heathen are cor^e into thine inheritance,
And thy temple have they defiled.
Who is this that cometh from Edom ?
He has trodden the wine-press alone.
There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled ;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither.
Like all men in all places,
Some went from love of glory,
Some went who were restless and curious,
Some were rapacious and lustful.
Many left their bodies to the kites of Syria
Or sea-strewn along the routes ;
Many left their souls in Syria,
Living on, sunken in moral corruption ;
Many came back well broken.
Diseased and beggared, finding
A stranger at the door in possession:
Came home cracked by the sun of the East
And the seven deadly sins in Syria.
[ ]
But our King did well at Acre.
And in spite of all the dishonour,
The broken standards, the broken lives.
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.
Only the faith could have done what was good of it.
Whole faith of a few,
Part faith of many.
Not avarice, lechery, treachery.
Envy, sloth, gluttony, jealousy, pride:
It was not these that made the Crusades,
But these that unmade them.
Remember the faith that took men from home
At the call of a wandering preacher.
Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And of moderate vice
When men will not lay down the Cross
Because they will never assume it.
Yet nothing is impossible, nothing.
To men of faith and conviction.
Let us therefore make perfect our will.
0 GOD, help us.
Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
And set thine heart upon all that I show thee.
Who is this that has said: the House of god is a House of
Sorrow ;
We must walk in black and go sadly, with longdrawn faces,
We must go between empty walls, quavering lowly,
whispering faintly.
Among a few flickering scattered lights ?
They would put upon god their own sorrow, the grief
they should feel
For their sins and faults as they go about their daily occa-
sions.
Yet they walk in the street proudnecked, like thorough
breds ready for races,
Adorning themselves, and busy in the market, the forum,
And all other secular meetings.
Thinking good of themselves, ready for any festivity,
Domg themselves very well.
Let us mourn in a private chamber, learning the way of pen-
itence,
And then let us learn the joyful communion of saints.
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself
with stone.
Spring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that
is joined to the soul of stone ;
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living
or lifeless
Joined with the artist’s eye, new life, new form, new col-
our.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of
verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, v^ords that have taken
the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty
of incantation.
LORD, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?
Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers
For life, for dignity, grace and order.
And intellectual pleasures of the senses?
The LORD who created must wish us to create
And employ our creation again in His serv ice
Which is already His service m creating.
For Man is joined spirit and body,
And therefore must serve as spirit and body.
Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in Marv;
Visible and invisible must meet in His Temple ;
You must not deny the body.
Now you shall see the Temple completed:
After much striving, after many obstacles ;
For the work of creation is never without travail ,
The formed stone, the visible crucifix,
The dressed altar, the lifting light,
Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
[178]
X
You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
By one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to god.
It is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill
In a world confused and dark and disturbed ‘by portents of
fear.
And what shall we say of the future? Is one church all we
can build?
Or shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?
The great snake lies ever half awake, at the bottom of the
pit of the world, curled
In folds of himself until he awakens in hunger and moving
his head to right and to left prepares for his hour to
devour.
But the Mystery of Iniquity is a pit too deep for mortal
eyes to plumb. Come
Ye out from, among those who prize the serpent’s golden
eyes,
The worshippers, self-given sacrifice of the snake. Take
Your way and be ye separate.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil ;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time ;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.
0 Light Invisible, we praise Theel
Too bright for mortal vision.
0 Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less ;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
[ 179]
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light.
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade
0 Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled.
The light of altar and of sanctuary ,
Small lights of those who meditate at midnight
And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
0 Light Invisible, we glonfy Thee !
In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of ligl^t. We are glad
when the day ends, wlien the play ends ; and ecstasy
is too much pain.
We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the
night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired ; and the day
is long for work or play.
We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are
glad to sleep,
Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the
night and the seasons.
And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and
relight it ;
Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.
[ '«»]
Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled
with shadow.
We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to findings
to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of
our eyes.
And when we have Built an altar to the Invisible Light, we
may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily
• vision is made.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
0 Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory !
Burnt Norton
TOV XoyOV S* ^c5 VTOS* ^WOV Z^tliOVUlV
oi TToXXoi ws ISuXV €XOVT€S
vrjatv,
^ p. 77. Fr. 2.
6S6s avio Kara} fJLUx kocI wvnq,
L p. 89. fr. 60.
Diels Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
(Herakleitos).
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstract!^"
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not knov^.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them.
Round the comer. Through the first gate.
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world
There they were, dignified, invisible.
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air.
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
[ 18^1
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern.
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown ed|^ed,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light, •
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind.
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.! ^
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
( 1861
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At tlje still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor
fleshless ;
Neither from nor towards ; at the still point, there the dance
is.
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire.
The release from action and suffering, release from the
inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
[ 187 1
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allovi^ but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in thts rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered ; involved with past and future.
/\ Only through time time is conquered.
Ill
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing aflPection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
[ 1881
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprtvation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense.
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same , not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us ; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
I At the still point of the turning world.
[189]
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time ; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, i
Can words or riiusic reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there t
Before the beginning and after the end.
\ And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden.
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, '
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place.
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the cleser.
Is most attacked by voices of temptation.
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera,.
The detail of the pattern is movement.
As in the figure of the ten stairs
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable ;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement ,
Timeless, and undesiring
[ 190 ]
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being*
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—.
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11